The year 2002

Many new games were released this year and our members, fond of new games as they are, requested to open clans for some of them too. The member-administration is fully automated and because of our third anniversary we also made plans for a new design of our website.

A major Organizational Change (Jan - Jul 2002) - part II

Everything is running smoothly again, time to bring the organization one step further: automation of the Member Administration and giving coleaders more responsibility and control.

At first we created join-forms for each game where new members could enter all the required info we need to know to join the clan, like email-address, nickname, the game to play, the clan to join and the like. After validation the info is stored in the members-database and the new member is sent a welcome email.

All coleaders are able to view all the requests and accept or reject these requests. The new member is notified about the action taken by the coleader. When accepted the new member is sent the join password for Westwood games or is automatically added to ClanBase when CS, RtCW or WarCraft.

Coleaders have full member control for their games as if they were clanfounders: they are not only able to accept new members, but also able to kick members immediately from our clan when neccessary (like cheating or abuse), they may use the central mailing system to mail all or part of their clan.

Members are able to update their own information in the databases, like accountnames, email-adresses, MSN, ICQ, phone numbers, the nickname they use at our messageboard, etc.

We have a planner system where members may show their availability for training or to play games or wars.

We cannot stop talking about automation without referring to our messageboard-troll, later on called Paulus by our members. He is checking our messageboard regularly to see if members still have access to our members-only forums on our messageboard.

Since mid July this system is fully up and running. Changes are made when requested, f.e. when coleaders or members would like new facilities.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein - 17 Jan 2002)

"A highly decorated Army Ranger recruited into the Office of Secret Actions (OSA) tasked with escaping and then returning to Castle Wolfenstein in an attempt to thwart Heinrich Himmler's occult and genetic experiments. Himmler believes himself to be a reincarnation of a 10th century dark prince, Henry the Fowler, also known as Heinrich. Through genetic engineering and the harnessing of occult powers, Himmler hopes to raise an unstoppable army to level the Allies once and for all."Don't forget: "Failure is not an option. If Himmler succeeds, the war is over for the Allies... and the war is over for everyone."

The game is very succesfully played and we often have to disappoint new members because both clans are overloaded.

Renegade - 7 Feb 2002

A new hype: Renegade. Westwood's "fast-paced 3-D action game set in the gripping Command & Conquer universe. For the first time, experience the Command and Conquer universe up close and personal as you fight it out on the ground among the structures, vehicles and weapons made famous in the original C&C".
As our members could not wait purchasing the game, two clans were opened to welcome new members dedicated to FPS-games.
I am sorry to say again: the game was nice, but did not compare to games like Counter-Strike, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, not to speak of Quake. It also did not meet the (high) expectations of the players. Our members very soon abandoned this game too and returned to base. Another € 50 wasted.

Rumors about expansion packs, game updates and sequels alle appreaved to be pillowtalk.

Will there be any sequel to Renegade?

Greg Hjelstrom [Westwood]: "Just to end the speculation, we were working on a sequel to Renegade which was in the RA universe and focused mostly on multiplay but it has indeed been cancelled."

So no close-up views of Tanya and Eva, fighting at your side. However, for those who are missing Tanya too much: here's the booby, right next to this story, you cant miss her. She's all there and all yours.

NukeZone - 10 Apr 2002

There are times you are waiting and waiting in the C&C game channels and no teammember online. Even in vein waiting in the game-room. It's a dull, when you wanna play and nobody outthere. A few members started to play the text-based game NukeZone. It soon had some 15 members and is played regularly. No webpage, no gamesupport, no scores on the website. It is planned to give it some attention and to try to extract the scores from NukeZone and publish the clan results on our website.

WarCraft-III - 15 Jul 2002

While waiting for Diablo-II's patch 1.10, WarCraft-III was released. 10-15 members purchased the game and are now trying to coplete the missions. Unfortunately the clan-system was not released when the game hit the shelves.

Warcraft III FAQ, Battlenet section

What features will Warcraft III offer to help support clans?

We are still working out the details for the Clan Support, but we would like to allow people to create clans, manage them with different levels of membership, home clan channels and clan ladders.

Blizzard still promises on their website that clansupport will be introduced in the forseeable future. Well we have to wait and see. In the mean time a clan is founded and has it's own section on our website and messageboard some players already finished all the missions and are showing off their skills on Battlenet.Oct 12th, we also joined ClanBase to play 2on2 games.

Soldier of Fortune - 11 Aug 2002

To make our players happy, we even founded a SoF clan. After a while we had to open a 2nd clan to accommodate all the members. Unfortunately the sudden grow resulted in a sudden death:

fifty percent of new the members originated from another clan and wanted a merger with our clan. Sadly enough only if we would use their clan name and they could use our facilities (....).

the members wanted us to rent a private or public server and only very few wanted to pay the monthly rent.

Very soon nearly all members left the clan and it was closed Oct 14.

Unreal Tournament 2003 - 19 (?) Nov 2002

"In the century after the events of UT Liandri Mining Corporation flourished, expanding their operations to include over seventy five percent of colonial space. While performing planetary surveys out on the colonial rim, a Liandri scout ship encountered the first wave of a vast armada of ships bearing down on human space. The arrival of the alien warships took mankind completely by surprise, and soon all of human space had fallen under the rule of a vast interstellar Empire. The laws of the Empire were harsh by human standards, but it became safe once again for cargo vessels to travel the shipping lanes without fear of privateers.

At first Imperial edict banned the tournaments as decadent and barbaric, but the Emperor's advisors observed that with proper management the contests could be used to make the newly absorbed colonies more pliant. This led to the formation of the Leagues, organized combative sports utilizing enemies of the Empire, criminals, and volunteers. With the public wagering on the outcome of the contests, the Imperial Treasury increased the wage of civil servants while quietly recouping the added expense at the betting kiosks of the League halls. One hundred and twenty years after the introduction of the Leagues the sports have become even more integral to society than the original tournaments, with convicted felons fighting for their freedom and volunteers fighting for riches and glory, and all of them fighting for their lives."

A new website - 13 Nov 2002

Although we already had a very nice website and an attractive menu, only one webmaster was able to make required changes to this flash-based menu. It was not always possible to immediately change or extend the menu when required, f.i. when new webpages were ready for the public, link-URL's that changed or new games FDNL entered. Too much info remained unseen at our domain or we had to create menus not compatible with the main menu.

So we desperately needed a new design to keep up with all requirements. During the year 2002 several new designs were proposed and we finally selected the design made by inTIMidate, that was refined by Imurderu and LordGeo and some comments made by a few external specialists.InTIMidate was reponsible for the graphical part of the design, Imurderu for designing and filling the informative links at the left and right below our base-menu and LordGeo for developping a new loader program to build each webpage and converting all the old programs and utilities to comply with our new website.

The advantages of the new design are:

one design for the whole domain

different colors for each game we play

game-name/logo on each webpage

gamebar (the possibility to instantly switch between gamesections) on each page

new game-sections may be implemented easily, using standard templates

all webpages are compiled using unique informationblocks

separate informative links for each game

realtime score update for CS and RtCW (C&C games will follow in a few weeks)

newspage editable by coleaders

menu editable by all webmasters

make changes on demand

"screenshot of the week" for each gamesection

voting system

integrated ad-banners for our sponsors

image management system to display videos, flashes or photos (LAN party!); the new system is currently in testmode; we expect it to be ready for general use by Dec 1, 2002.

The selected new design makes sure that all webmasters are able to easily update our site; also the coleaders will play a more important role in keeping their sections up-to-date. They all got a preview opportunity and proposed several updates to the site.

Well, you found your way to this story, so you already got your hands on the new site.

Don't forget to tell InTIMidate, the designer of the new layout, Imurderu and LordGeo, the webmasters, what you think of it; they'll appreciate your nice comments.

Our first LAN-party - 1 Dec 2002

Sjappie, our Party Manager, setup a LAN-party at The Game Syndicate located in Rotterdam. A major succes, where our members had the chance to finally meet each other in real life.